Can't boot from recovery DVD

My aspire (linpus, 1gb ram, 120gb hard drive) boots to the desktop but won't let me launch anything. I can't alt-f2 to get a terminal. It's "working" because it's connecting to my wireless router ok, the clock comes up etc. I was playing around with it, customizing it, and was getting it to be pretty nice and nifty and usable. I noticed that some apps had stopped working. I assumed it was because I'd installed Firefox 3. I didn't really care too much, because it broke the RSS feed thing which I'll never use, plus some lame email nonsense. But I draw the line at Pidgin! I had previously followed the info on this page:

http://jorge.ulver.no/2008/08/06/acer-a ... ngFirefox3

but the page is currently down (although the site is pingable - not sure what's going on there). I tried uninstalling and reinstalling firefox 2 and now I'm in my current predicament. I'm sure a Linux pro could boot from a usb key and edit a few files to reenable the desktop, but I'm just starting out down the Linux road and cannot do this.

I can't boot the recovery DVD to make a recovery USB key - I tried copying the dvd and running the copy in case there was a problem with the disk but now I have two DVDs which I can't boot from. I tried disconnecting my hard drives on my pc but still the same - I boot the DVD and choose `create recovery DVD` and after a few seconds my keyboard LEDs flash and that's that. So until I can find another PC to boot this DVD on I'm not sure how I'm going to create this USB key and boot from that and sort out my Acer. (I'm assuming that after all this I can actually fix up my hard drive based Aspire - all the stuff I've read on the net about this refer to the SDD version).

I don't suppose there's anything else I can do, is there?

1) Some nifty keyboard sequence on the Aspire before/after booting? I'm not exactly sure what's running on my Aspire once it's booted - there's xfce4/compiz and the default one, and I did a bit of editing of the startup files to get it to where it was (which was pretty nice, it has to be said - other than this I'm well impressed with both Linux and the Aspire).

2) Another version of Linux on a USB key and repairing the first from there? Not sure what/how to repair though, which is why a restore is probably the best option - it's not like my hard drive is full of valuable data I can't afford to lose

I'll also have to look into how to back up the Aspire onto my main pc using something like Ghost so I can put an image back if this happens again - is this easy?

Thanks to anyone who answers any of my problems!

ps. Perhaps the recovery disk won't run because I have a quad core cpu and 4 gigs of ram?

 

my computer wouldn't make a usb recovery, i think it was because i was running vista, as i tried using my windows xp laptop and it worked perfect first time. its much easier to just reformat the thing than trying to fix it

 

Here's what i do. http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3182&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=30#p31803 It just takes a 4GB or 8GB flash drive.

Read the entire thread for some other system backup methods.